Road Bike Skating

Nothing at all like Road Block Trippin… or better yet… Road Bike Skating, which makes a much better song in my opinion… road bike skating in the middle of the night… sing it. How much fun would THAT be?

Ok, yeah, whatever. The point is, I learned a new trick today. I’m not exactly sure it is a new trick per se, perhaps just a new application of an old trick. Road Bike Skating, the act of riding your road bike on hard pack snow melt, is not so unlike riding through gravel, sand, mud, muck, water with who knows what underneath, glacial deposits, jello pudding, split pea soup, marble fields and Bilenky Junkyard Cross style upholstery traps. The theory is the same. Best advice I received before my first mtb race… “when you head off into the gravel take your weight off your bars and pedal, pedal, pedal, keep control but let your front wheel float, oh,yeah, and get the hole shot”.

So it goes like this… loosen up, put your weight back on the seat a little, ease your grip, engage your core, switch to a lower gear, crank the crap out of those pedals and be ready to throw some knee out for balance when you get a little off. And DON’T freak out! It might feel like you are out of control but as long as you are moving forward… the world will keep spinning, Elvis will never die and bicycles will outnumber cars on the roads in 2015! Well, you know what I mean, life is good.

Winter Cycling Bonus: Its so refreshing and the scenery is amazing, you almost forget how hard you are working!

Your front wheel won’t be as likely to catch on the unknown when it is “floating” without weight. With your weight on the back wheel you’ll have traction to plow through anything. And you MUST pedal, stopping in the middle will make you more frustrated than a two year old trying to get candy out of a diabetic Nunn.

Fortunately, this is a skill that I don’t remember having to learn, I think it is part instinct. Sometimes that is all you need. Blowing snot rockets and launching a spit ball that doesn’t slime the side of your face and get caught on your earring, well those are NOT instinct, at least not in my book.

Stay tuned… adventure number next one… The Bruise Report goes under cover to learn the dirty little secrets of rolling snot rockets and power expectorating.